


First, cast out fear

by LtNova, tselina



Series: Star Trek: Pleiades [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Original Vulcan Customs, Pre-Series, family bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12025533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtNova/pseuds/LtNova, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tselina/pseuds/tselina
Summary: "I am not," Spock said, "just any child.”Pre-Series/Movies, AOS. Sarek learns the logic of leniency.By tselina. Originally published under a pseudonym, LtNova.





	First, cast out fear

**Author's Note:**

> **TW for Animal Death.** I know I-Chaya is male originally, but I figure there’s leniency for other differences before and after the Kelvin divergence. 
> 
> I’ve always been fairly influenced by A.C. Crispin’s “Sarek” when it comes to the S’chn T’gai family, as it was one of my favorite tie-in books back in the day. I add a few touches of some extraneous Vulcan customs, extrapolated from what we know already -- and of course, a little personal artistic license. :)
> 
> Vulcan endearments and the like are provided by the VLD ( http://www.starbase-10.de/vld/ ).

There was quiet, in the morning, in the way the air grows thin before a sandstorm. The empty halls of D'H'riset were no more than echo-chambers, the servants dismissed and the drapes wide open. The winter months brought a great, dry chill, and under his robes Sarek shivered. The fires would not be lit in the underforge until the investigation was over, and who knew when that would be -- he wanted to feel the cold, he wanted his home to be inhospitable to anyone else who dared come into the gates. He made his way towards the main foyer hall, where the central fountain bubbled and churned, his wife Amanda rising to see him.

" _Ashayam_ ," she said, and forewent the usual touch of fingers: she embraced Sarek instead, and he allowed it, enveloping her in his arms. They remained together, no eyes on them to judge their mixed customs, their physical closeness.

" _Tal-kam_ ," he said to her, and pulled away. "Tell me where our youngest son is."

"He's on the balcony of the boys’ rooms. T’Hanna told me before she’d ushered the other servants out.” Amanda wiped at her face, though she was beyond tears -- she’d wept in respectable quiet, and now her anger was far greater than her sorrow. “And she told me -- she told me I-Chaya is dead. The intruders slit her throat before they came in.”

The news settled poorly in Sarek's stomach. I-Chaya had been given to him as a boy, the sehlat a valued family member. She had been part pet, part guard, the first creature that Sarek had ever mind-melded with. Her temperament had been a fine one for her species, and she was set to have lived another twenty years, if not longer. Now, she would not see another full pass of T'Khut over the sky.

He could not dwell on the sentiment behind I-Chaya's death, for there was a greater loss to process: Sybok was gone. Not dead, not yet, but soon enough. There was also, too, trepidation of the days to come.

Sarek offered his arm to Amanda in a human fashion, and together they walked towards the living quarters, winding through the debris of Sybok's attempt at defending himself: broken vases, scattered flowers, fine sands and salts imprinted with the marks of his bare feet and the booted soles of the intruders. Down the steps they went, where the boys' room was, and they saw the doors to their balcony wide open, curtains fluttering, and a small dark form against the pinky morning sky.

Spock was sat next to the great body of the sehlat, a hand in its tacky fur. He had covered the creature's face with a towel, as to honor her. His shoulders went rigid when he heard them approach, but settled when he appeared to recognize their footfalls.

"It is a great shame," Spock intoned, with a startling emptiness, "I-Chaya was a very good guardian, or so I thought. In the end, she could not prevent what happened to my brother."

"It does not mean she failed to do her duty," Sarek said, disquieted by Spock's dismissal of the creature's utility, rather than praise her bravery, as a child should be wont to do. "She will be honored."

"Yes, Father," Spock said. "I apologize for making light of her sacrifice."

"Don't apologize, _pi-haurok_ ," Amanda said, now flanking the other side of their son. "Everyone reacts to grief differently."

"How should I react, then?" Spock asked, and Sarek and Amanda, through the thread of their bond, shared an ambient thrill of dismay. Amanda locked eyes with Sarek over the boy's black head, her mouth slightly agape.

"It is admissible," Sarek said quickly, giving a single look up at his wife, and then at his youngest son, "to experience grief in such a moment as this, Spock. Over I-Chaya, and your brother."

"For how long, Father?"

An honest request for the prescribed duration of time a Vulcan would be allowed to feel emotion after losing a family member. Spock, his brown eyes at current blank, his face still as he could manage though his mouth wavered, waited for his father's leave to mourn.

There were formalities of mourning family, as with any species, race, and culture. Vulcans, especially children, were not required to be so well-contained. Spock was. Spock, the child of two worlds, who could not exist easily in either; Sarek had been training him since he began to speak with the strictest tenets Surak had ever laid out. Too strict, Amanda had said, more than once, yet Sarek could not relent. Spock's future depended on him overcoming what others saw as a form of disability, overcoming the idea of being the outcome of a traitorous union -- on Spock being the ideal Vulcan, when those who passed judgment on the boy were certainly failing at such things, themselves.

Here, his boy, whether he be human or Vulcan, should have been weeping for the loss of his elder brother, a boy who'd doted on him as his human mother did. Cheerful Sybok, whose emotional influence Sarek had found intrusive and counterproductive towards Spock's training, was now gone. And not for any fault of his own. Sarek did not believe for a moment Sybok had done the things the Vulcan Consulate had charged him with. 

Spock did not yet know the ins and outs of Vulcan politics, or that the tribunal to come would be a sham of justice, the judgment bereft of logic. All the boy knew is that his elder brother had been dragged away in a whirlwind of violence and the family pet's throat slit to keep her from calling out to her masters, his robe still soaked with the animal’s thick blue-green blood.

"Mourning rituals vary for those of different ages," Sarek said, a hand on Spock's head, a rare show of paternal touch, "but if you require additional time to express yourself, you may do so." Added hastily, "in private, of course."

Amanda made a noise through her nose -- an annoyed whistling sound, as it had been stopped up with mucus from weeping -- and reached to put her hand on Sarek's, weighing it down.

"What your father is saying is -- it's okay, _pi-haurok_ , to cry right now. No one will judge you for being emotional for your family being taken apart. He was part of our Bond, and now he's gone."

It was not an entirely accurate assessment, but Amanda's voice allowed for none of Sarek's interjections. Regardless, Spock ducked away, and stood, his dirtied robes dragging some of I-Chaya's blood over the pale red marble that lead back into the villa.

"I do not need to mourn, Mother, Father," he said, rigid. "I have done it already."

"What do you mean?" Sarek stood. "You asked for our customs, and that they give leave for emotional excess in this matter."

"I embarrassed you last night, Father," Spock began, his small fists trembling at his sides, "in front of all those soldiers. I wept and screamed and begged for Sybok, and they looked at me with such distaste. It is bad enough one of your offspring is a traitor. What of a squalling, half-human child that cannot accept the righteousness of the law, or of justice? I failed you."

" _Spock_ ," Amanda said, with no small amount of horror.

"You did not fail me," Sarek said, with no prompting necessary from his wife, stepping towards his son. "Whether you behaved admirably or not --"

" _Ashayam_ ," Amanda said, a ripple of warning striking him as a lash.

"-- I am not ashamed of you screaming, or crying out." It was the truth. Vulcans could circumvent truth, but not deny it. And, his son was clearly hurting, despite what he struggled to display outwardly. "Or begging. Your brother was taken from your rooms and you were frightened that they were trying to kill him, and you. Children are allowed to be frightened."

"I am not," Spock said, "just any child.”

“No, you are not just any child, that is true. You are half-human, as you said,” Sarek said, placing a hand on Spock’s shoulder. Before Amanda could interject, he said, “and so, you must know both of your cultures would allow for such outbursts of emotion. Yet, now, you have controlled yourself to this degree for many an hour. You have proven your ability to center yourself, Spock, beyond even a Vulcan’s standard for their full-blooded children. It is admirable."

Amanda was not pleased with this assessment, not at first. But, when Spock’s shoulders began to soften, her mood shifted; she understood why Sarek had phrased it the way he did.

“Truly?” Spock asked. “I do not wish to be -- to be self-satisfied about this, Father, but -- truly? A full-blooded Vulcan child would not be expected to be so calm?”

“No,” Sarek said, and gently turned Spock to look down at him properly. “They would not.”

The boy took in a shuddering breath. A few small tears ran down his cheeks, and though Spock did not weep loudly, he allowed himself to cry. Amanda came and wrapped her arms around him, looking up at Sarek with a curious gratitude.

“That’s why they made you an Ambassador, you know,” she said.

“They made me Ambassador because it is a custom in my family’s lineage,” Sarek said, folding his arms into his robes, “and because I took the political track at the Academy, once astrophysics provided me no additional challenge.”

“Sure, that’s the only reason.” Amanda smiled at him, a warm and pleasing sensation that fought the desert’s chill wind. She stood and dusted off her tunic, looking behind her. “You should get inside, my dears. It’s safer and warmer. Allow me to handle I-Chaya, and we can have a dedication ceremony tonight.”

“Thank you, Wife,” Sarek said. “Spock, come. We will go perform the morning tea ceremony together.”

“Yes, Father,” Spock said, the brief tremor of unchecked relief in his voice.

Sarek held his hand out to his son, extending his fourth and fifth finger for him to grasp with his own, the way a family greeted each other, rather than the fore and middle finger gesture of a bonded couple. Spock’s smallest finger curled against Sarek’s, and he tucked close at his father’s side as they walked in, burrowing like the hawkling his mother called him.

Spock still looked ashamed, but Sarek hoped that would pass. It was only logical to accept one’s outbursts and work past them, rather than dwelling. Sarek did not bother mentioning this to Spock, however: right now, the boy did not need lessons in logic, or rationality. He needed structure and leniency, which was its own brand of comfort, and that is what Sarek could certainly supply. At least for today.


End file.
